Pathetic
by sheepy-t-wise
Summary: Primarily focusing on an internal conflict concerning Trowa's thoughts, emotions, and lack of self-confidence, the aforementioned pilot tries to sort out and understand how he feels about himself, the other pilots, and mostly Heero whilst the wounded young man is in his care. 3x1, one-sided 3x4 and 3x5.


AN: ok hi this is the first fic i've written in like? 2 or 3 years the last fic i wrote was a dumb tf2 fic probably

but yeah 3/1 is my favorite pairing and this was inspired by the episodes where trowa is taking care of heero after he blows up his gunDUMB hahahahaha #cleverjoke and i rarely ever write fanfiction but i was reeaaally inspired to write this one

finished for my friends ramona and mary, worked on it for like almost a month hope u enjoy read&review also i'm listing it as in progress for now bc i don't know if i want to continue it but i probably will if enough people like it

* * *

I'm so weak.

I'm so weak and insecure and pathetic.

I can never deal with my own problems, and when I try to deal with someone else's, I always make it about me. I can't help anyone, not even myself, because I'm selfish. I become attached to people too easily, and when I do, I think about nothing but myself. I don't think about how they feel, only how they feel about me. I'm like that with everyone.

When he tried to kill himself, I couldn't react. I didn't know what to do, I hadn't even gotten enough time to even recognize what was going on, and I even went as far as to tell myself that it wasn't happening, that he wasn't lying face-up with blood pouring from his forehead and his listless eyes staring up at the sky and dirt over other open wounds and they would have gotten infected if there was even any living tissue left. He was pale, and he was dead, and I didn't want to believe it.

I was so scared. I'm always scared. The only thing I knew to do was sit in my cockpit and act like it didn't bother me that one of the only other people in the entire world who had any hope of preventing war killed himself without a second thought. One of the only other people who could stop all of this and stop this war and stop all these meaningful lives from being ended just ended his own meaningful life without even thinking about it. He was so important to everyone involved with this, and he didn't care.

He was important to me, to the colonies, to everyone. And he was gone.

I couldn't cry. I couldn't give up. I had to keep fighting even if Heero wasn't fighting along with us. I had to keep fighting, and I couldn't give in to any of my weak, pathetic emotions and desires of wanting to get out of this entirely. I had a responsibility, and no matter how much I wish I didn't, that I had never even been born at this point, I had to be responsible and mature and not give up. Not being scared and not wanting to die was mature.

The worst part is that I've been wanting to kill myself since even before I was chosen to pilot the Heavyarms. I was a hypocrite, but the difference was that my life was never anywhere near as important as Heero's and it never would be. Quatre mentioned how he saw him as being something of a leader even before he knew who he was, because "he's number one." It was such a cheesy and baseless thing for him to say, and I didn't agree with him then, but every single little thing I had thought about Heero in the past, from his actions to how he spoke to how he carried himself, had suddenly hit me like an on-coming car when I realized he wasn't going to just walk away from this and it made me feel cold and stiff and scared.

I had to do something. I couldn't let him lay there without at least trying to save him even when it was obviously so futile while the other pilots figured out what to do next. I grabbed him in the hand of my Gundam and told the others I'd take care of him. Once I was a safe distance away from them, I nearly broke down and started shaking and making weird whines, and I wasn't even sure why. I knew I couldn't cry, so that was probably it. I was acting like a stupid child who couldn't have their way because I was ordered not to cry and I can't make my own decisions without screwing up completely.

When I'd hidden the Gundam, I jumped out and grabbed Heero and tried carrying him to the circus trailer. At one point I just stopped and buried my face in his chest and held him in my arms while I was kneeling and shaking and whining in the grass. I started crying then, but I figured it wouldn't count since I was hiding my face in a lifeless corpse. I was breaking a direct order, but I couldn't control myself. I was so overwhelmed, so scared, and I couldn't do anything. My tears were beginning to stain his tanktop, mixing with the dirt and blood and grease, but I didn't care. I clung to him like he was Romeo and I was Juliet and let the tears roll down my face until Katherine saw us and helped him inside.

I never told him or any of the other pilots. I didn't even tell Katherine, though she could tell he was important to me, even if I, myself, couldn't understand why. I think it was then she started treating me more like a brother and stopped telling me how good-looking I was.

I'm so insecure.

The only reason I was so scared was because I didn't want it to just be four of us. I could understand crying that much, even harder, if Quatre died, but Heero wasn't Quatre, so that was the only thing I could guess. I was crying because I was selfish, not because I was scared.

I was actually just lying to myself, though.

Looking back now, I can't help but laugh to myself at how ridiculous I had been. How pathetic, stupid, gullible. Of course Heero hadn't died, he was the leading man, and the story was nowhere near finished yet. Katherine told me the morning after I'd brought him in that he was going to be just fine-remarkably, she added-so long as I took care of him. Which, of course, I would, much to my demise.

I still didn't understand why I was crying. I think it was just because I'd felt so ridiculously taken over by his death, and a part of me was jealous. I can't stand living with myself, I absolutely detest myself, and I didn't think it was fair that Heero got to die and I didn't. It wasn't fair to me, either, or any of the other Gundam pilots because I was scared we would fail and I'd have even more of a reason to hate myself.

Caring for him gave me a sense of purpose. I didn't let it show, and I never told Katherine no matter how much she'd try to get me to talk. It was stupid, since I was supposed to be protecting the colonies, but since Heero's Gundam was demolished, no one had been receiving any new orders (I assumed so, at least, since I hadn't gotten any and I hadn't heard anything from anyone else). Cleaning his wounds and applying new bandages and making sure he didn't get any bed sores filled me with such a warm feeling, it was a great contrast to the day I thought he died.

It was the same warmth I felt when Quatre invited me to his house and Wufei and I shared that soft silence. The warmth I hated and couldn't avoid.

I always felt that warmth when I was around other boys. Other boys that I felt close to, to a degree. The man who built my Gundam never explained it to me; he'd always avoid talking about it whenever I brought it up. I never had any friends when I was young, or even before I met the man who built my Gundam, but I imagine I'd feel the same way about them. I can't control it, and I hate it, because it leaves me feeling so disgusting, like all I want them for is for my own benefit. So I can feel good, and maybe not hate myself, and so I can make them feel good, so they'll be happy with _me_.

I wanted to hold Quatre in my arms and breathe into his neck; I wanted his long, spindly fingers to stroke my back and massage my scalp while he smiled at me and we laid in his bed. I wanted him to entwine his fingers with my own, and kiss me and whisper sweet things to me and make my face go red and have my stomach turn into an inferno. I wanted Wufei to hold my wrists and grip the back of my head and stare into my eyes; I didn't want him to be as delicate as Quatre, but I didn't want him to hurt. I wanted him to be quiet the whole time, not say a single thing, and at the end we would sit by the fire and look at the stars together while he held my hand, like nothing else mattered. I was never happy when I thought those things. I always wanted to die right there whenever I thought those things.

I didn't know what I wanted to do with Heero, but the warmth in my chest I felt was stronger than I felt for Quatre or Wufei. I hated it so much. Sometimes it was so bad that I wish I'd never saved him.

I'm so disgusting.

The day he woke up and stared at me with those dark eyes almost made my heart explode. I managed to avoid embarrassing myself, but in my mind I was grinning and in reality my blood was so warm and my organs were dancing. My legs were shaking and the demon hanging over my shoulders faded away and the dark cloud above my presence disappeared. I wanted to go over and hug him and bury my face in his chest like I did the day I thought he died and lay with him until the stars in the sky all burnt out and engaged in supernova and shattered the universe. I wanted to keep him in my arms forever, and the war was forgotten and Quatre was forgotten and the Gundams were forgotten. All that mattered was him, the moment he showed me how beautiful those eyes were.

I felt the color physically drain from my face and my body petrify when I realized that's what I was thinking about, and the demon was slowly coming back and the cloud was reforming and the warm feeling was turning to ice. I didn't attribute the feelings I had for him to anything other than relief that my treatments had paid off and helped him recover. I attributed the warmth to happiness that he was alive and well, and I attributed wanting to watch the universe implode around the two of us and watch the stars all burst out of existence to-

To-

To me being pathetic and weak and hopeless and afraid.

I told him what everyone had been doing since he'd been incapacitated, as far as I knew. Most of it was about Quatre. I told him how long it'd been, and I told him what OZ had done. He was the same as me; he couldn't show emotion. Whether he had been ordered not to, however, was something I wasn't sure of. He was angry, regardless, and he knew he had to do something. But his Gundam was destroyed, and he had to recover, whether he wanted to or not. He stared at me for a moment and then at his legs, and when he had made up his mind as evidenced by his expression in his eyes, he was interrupted as he clenched his left arm and laid back down and started groaning.

"So I heard your little friend woke up this morning." Katherine sat across from me as she handed me a plate of whatever she'd made for dinner. She told me to give some to Heero later, since it was important for him to eat.  
I didn't say anything.

"Haha, should have expected as much. You did a good job taking care of him, Trowa, I'm glad he managed to recover, and as fast as he did! How is he doing?"

"-Good."

"The-re we go, Trowa." She gave me the softest smile. "You might want to start practicing being more talkative; what if your friend wants to have a stimulating conversation?"

She laughed at her own joke and I glanced up from my plate.

"You seem pretty attached to him, though. I know you won't tell me how he got hurt, or how you met him, but I want you to tell me whenever he improves, okay?"

"Yeah."

She went on about how concerned she was for him, but I took a moment's reprieve to think about what she had said. I was attached to him. I wasn't going to deny that, but I didn't want to accept it, necessarily. I subconsciously started tapping my fork against the side of the plate while I thought about it. I was attached because I'd been taking care of him for so long, not for any other reason. When he'd woken up, yeah, I'd-

"Is something bothering you, Trowa?"

I didn't say anything.

"I know there is, don't be so stubborn and just tell me. It's not good to keep things like that building up."

My lips got tight.

"Trowa-"

"-I'm scared."

I was scared of becoming attached to him. Katherine didn't know how I felt about him, and no matter how much I tried to deny it, I was fully aware. I knew exactly why he made me feel like there were butterflies in my intestines every time he'd look at me, why his voice felt like silk to my ears, and why the touch of his skin felt like a blanket of heat. It was my own fault for taking him back, and I had to reap my sorrows.

That night, I looked at my wrist. It was never really that often, but enough to see a few scars and a few fresh scratches. It was never deep enough to wound, but enough to bleed, to make me feel pain, to punish myself for being so disgusting and pathetic and horrible. No one knew about the marks, aside from my Doctor. He just looked at them during my physical, and told me not to be stupid. Aside from that, he didn't care. He'd made mention some time after that about me being depressed, and I suppose that was true.

The marks that night trailed up my arm, and blood trickled down my wrist and onto the floor. It reminded me of Heero when I pulled shrapnel out of his wrist, the way it flowed out of him like a river. I held his hand, even though he was unconscious, and I told myself it was to comfort him. With our fingers wrapped around each other, and the blood pooled between our palms, that was when I became "attached" to him.

I was an awful person, an awful, disgusting person, and I wanted to saw my hand off and bleed to death so I could stop feeling like this.

So I could stop hating myself and loving others.

Every morning I had to check his temperature to make sure he wasn't running a fever. I walked into the trailer several days after he had first woken up, and at this point I'd stop announcing I was there, because he asked me to with his expression and because it felt like I was insulting his intelligence. I relied on my sense of touch, and every morning I'd put my hand on his forehead, brushing away his bangs gently and staring at him while I felt if he was hot. He never looked at me when I did this, and I was glad. It helped me retain what little strength I had.

I made a terrible mistake that day. I could never take it back, and it would make the demon stronger and the demon would swallow me and drag me to the deepest reaches of the world, and the only thing that would save me would be death. I fucked up because I couldn't make my own decisions. Nothing good ever comes of them.

"Trowa?"

My hand had lingered on his forehead for too long and had drifted slightly towards his cheek. He was looking at me, and I knew I had a pained expression on my face. He looked mad as always, and I couldn't go back. If the demon didn't consume me, my fear would, and that was something I knew I wouldn't be able to stand.

I couldn't stop myself.

I gave in.

"I'm sorry, Heero."

His lips were so soft, and I hated that. They were soft and small and sweet, and I hated that. They'd opened up just a tiny bit, making it easier for ours to connect, and I hated that. I felt all my fear melt and flow out of my body into a puddle at my feet, and I hated that. I hated the relief and warmth I was feeling from this, and I hated that I never wanted it to stop. It was the greatest feeling I'd ever experienced, and for a moment-

For a single moment, one small second in the entire expanse of reality, in all that was and would ever end up being-

I was happy. And I hated that.

He didn't respond, he didn't deepen it, he didn't even make a noise. I loved that. It was exactly as I was expecting and hoping for.

When I pulled away, he simply stared at me. He didn't look upset, or happy, or anything. He looked indifferent as always. His eyes told me he wanted an explanation, and I would give him one after I calmed my heart and head down. I knew my face was beginning to heat up, and I couldn't pull my hand away from his face, but after a few moments I managed to gather myself and sit across from him at the desk, looking at the ground.

I was nervous, but I had to tell him. I had to tell him all these things I thought about him, about Quatre, about Wufei.

I told him something no one besides Heavyarms and the man who built him knew.

I like boys.

When I had met Quatre, he had shown me such kindness. He always held my hands and always asked me questions, and it felt different to me than when Katherine did it. He always gave me a warm smile and made me want to talk and tell him everything-what I was thinking, what I was feeling, anything on my mind at all. I couldn't smile at him, but I wanted to, more than I wanted peace in the colonies and more than I wanted to stop fighting and more than I wanted to die. I wanted to smile and laugh and kiss him and lay in his arms and sigh. But I didn't want to scare him away, and I knew I would. He'd turn bright red, and he'd step away, and ask me to leave. So I left on my own. He was disappointed, but it was for the best.

I can't make decisions for myself or else I'd screw everything up.

When I had spent time with Wufei, the serious look on his face as he stared at the fire had me entranced. The silence we shared was as lovely as the wonderful time I'd spent with Quatre before, and I wanted to sit closer to him. I wanted to hold his hand in silence and stare at the fire and not say anything. I wanted to kiss him, too, and I felt like I was betraying Quatre, and the few other nameless boys I'd liked before, and the Doctor's assistant, but I knew if I had done that, he would have stood up, walked away, and called me weak and disgusting.

I am weak and disgusting. I just didn't want to hear it.

I was scared something like that would happen when I was taking care of Heero, and it did. But since I couldn't just leave him, the feeling intensified and turned into severe adoration. I studied the structure of his face, I counted his eyelashes, and I noticed the specks of light blue in his eyes. I'd looked at the lines of his lips and worshiped them, and every night I chastised myself and even tried to starve myself. I stopped eating Katherine's food, I stopped eating my own food, but she hadn't noticed because I was already so skinny. I knew I couldn't die, because Heero-the colonies-needed me, but I couldn't need him.

I knew enough of his personality to know how he'd react in case I did kiss him. I was scared more of my own feelings, and not so much his reaction. I knew the most he'd do was punch me with his good arm, but he wouldn't shove me away or insult me or ask me to leave. He wouldn't back up and make me feel like shit, and he wouldn't walk away and never speak to me again. Whether it was because he knew he needed me, or because he just wasn't like that, it didn't matter. I knew all I had to be scared of was how I felt about him, and when the pain was too much, I gave in to my desires.

"I hate being so scared all the time."

He hadn't said anything once I'd finished explaining myself, which was fine. It was better if he didn't say anything. It helped me scold myself if he didn't comment on anything I'd said, and I'd better be able to-

"The only reason I can see it being wrong that you like boys is that it distracts you from fighting OZ. You need to be completely focused and have zero distractions. Your mind must be on the fight, on your missions, and having it on anything else-no matter what it is-is a terrible mistake."

He was staring at the window high up on the wall, and I felt my heart leap. He turned to look directly into my eyes, and my heart really did explode. I wanted to cry again.

"Other than that, I can't find anything wrong with it at all. I don't get why you do, other than it being a hassle."

My brow furrowed slightly. He kept staring at me, directly into my eyes, and I felt tense under his hawk-like gaze. It was strange-I felt incredibly relieved, while at the same time, I felt even more troubled than I had before. It was astounding that he was so accepting of me, of my problem, even when I forced it on him without so much as hinting at it. My eyes kept flickering between the ceiling, him, and the floor; I felt cornered, for no real reason.

"You might be so easily attracted to others because you're so stressed out. It's not my place to say, but while I, personally, believe distractions to be the difference between life or death, maybe they'd be good for you. Hating yourself is a distraction, and if you constantly feel like that, you need to do what makes you happy. I don't mean opting out of fighting, because only an idiot would take that route, and if you chose that method, I'd have to kill you."

I was quiet for what felt like years, although it was only a few seconds. My grip tightened on my jeans, and my blood didn't know what it wanted to do, as it was stuck between freezing or boiling. I felt like I was being lectured, but I didn't understand the lesson I was being told.

"What do you mean, then?"

"The only way to live a good life is to live by your emotions." He sat up slowly, and gripped his arm so it wouldn't hurt as much. He slung his legs across the side of the bed, and after he'd readjusted himself, he began speaking again. "If you need a distraction, then do what makes you happy. If it will keep you focused on the task at hand, I'm willing to do anything to help. You're just as important as everyone else is, and we can't afford having someone like you constantly dwell on things that don't matter."

He reached out, and his hand was shaking as it gripped my shirt. Was he nervous? Or in pain? I knew exactly what he meant, but I couldn't believe it. He-I'd never expected someone like him, or in general, to say something like that about me. I knew I mattered as much as everyone else, but even Quatre never brought that up. My instructor told me once, before I left, but I never took it to heart, since he didn't seem to treat me as anything other than a Gundam pilot. It struck me like a sucker punch, when he said that focusing on my self-hatred didn't matter, but it was sort of true.

"Doctor J told me that if I can help it, I must prevent my comrades from focusing on anything other than the fight against OZ. He never mentioned _this_, but-"

He was quiet again. He was nervous, I could tell, but he didn't want to say it. I didn't want to guilt trip him into letting me kiss him, but he was consenting, in a way. I didn't know if he wanted to do this because he enjoyed the kiss, or he felt obligated, or what, but instead of dwelling on it-

Instead of trying to make myself feel bad-

I took his advice and kissed him. He kissed back.

And for a single moment, for just one small second in the entire expanse of reality, until the end of time when all the stars in the sky would engage in supernova and the universe would collapse on just the two of us-

I was happy.

And I loved it.


End file.
